Sant’Agnese in Agone is a 17th century Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It faces onto the Piazza Navona, one of the main urban spaces in the historic center of the city.

The rebuilding of the church was begun in 1652 at the instigation of Pope Innocent X whose family palace, the Palazzo Pamphili, faced onto the piazza and was adjacent to the site of the new church. The church was to be effectively a family chapel annexed to their residence. A number of architects were involved in the construction of the church, including Girolamo Rainaldi and his son Carlo Rainaldi, and two of the foremost Baroque architects of the day; Francesco Borromini and the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini.

The name of this church is unrelated to the ‘agony’ of the martyr: in agone was the ancient name of Piazza Navona (piazza in agone), and meant instead, from the Greek, ‘in the site of the competitions’, because Piazza Navona was built on the form of an ancient Roman stadium on the Greek model, with one flat end, and was used for footraces. From ‘in agone’, the popular use and pronunciation changed the name into ‘Navona’, but other roads in the area kept the original name.

My own exploration:

Keywords: Baroque& Interior Decorations

Baroque& Interior Decorations

We are not allowed to take photos when we can to the interior, I can introduce some of the information: there are a number of large scale sculptures in this church, including the marble relief in the main altar, placed in a setting installed by Carlo Rainaldi and Ciro Ferri, that depicts the Miracle of Saint Agnes, initially commissioned from Alessandro Algardi and completed by Ercole Ferrata and Domenico Guidi in 1688, under constraints that their product must remain in conformity with the original Algardi design. The Sacred Family altarpiece (third to the right) is also by Domenico Guidi.

The altar dedicated to Saint Alexius, depicting his death, was completed by Giovanni Francesco Rossi. The stucco decoration of angels by Ferrata with the symbols of the Saint: pilgrim’s staff and flower crown. The altar depicting the Martyrdom of Sant’Emerenziana is by Ercole Ferrata. He also completed Sant’Agnese and the flame, Leonardo Retti completed the superior portions. The altar depicting the Death of Santa Cecilia was executed by Antonio Raggi. Stucco angel decorations (with musical instruments) by Ercole Ferrata with fresco designs by Ciro Ferri. The altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St. Eustace was commissioned to Melchiorre Caffà, but generally completed after Caffà’s early death by Ferrata and Giovanni Francesco Rossi. The statue of Saint Sebastian Martyr is by Pietro Paolo Campi.

Sketch of the main alter

One characteristic of Baroque architecture is ‘painterly’ color effects, I was caught by this notion when I saw the main alter of this church, also, it has fascinating detailing with free curves and romantic motion.

Pantheon is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD.The temple is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).

It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to “St. Mary and the Martyrs” but informally known as “Santa Maria della Rotonda.” The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.

My own exploration:

Keywords:Portico&Logistic, Rotunda, Interior

Portico&Logistic

We visited Pantheon through Piazza della Rotonda, the portico was the first part that caught into my eyes, the pediment was decorated with relief sculpture, probably of gilded bronze. Holes marking the location of clamps that held the sculpture suggest that its design was likely an eagle within a wreath; ribbons extended from the wreath into the corners of the pediment.

From the reading, I know that it took 732 construction workers over 3 years to construct the Pantheon because of its many features.The Pantheon’s porch was originally designed for monolithic granite columns with shafts 50 Roman feet tall, the substitution was probably a result of logistical difficulties at some stage in the construction. The grey granite columns that were actually used in the Pantheon’s pronaos were quarried in Egypt at Mons Claudianus in the eastern mountains. Each was 39 feet (12 m) tall, five feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. These were dragged more than 100 km from the quarry to the river on wooden sledges. They were floated by barge down the Nile River when the water level was high during the spring floods, and then transferred to vessels to cross the Mediterranean Sea to the Roman port of Ostia. There, they were transferred back onto barges and pulled up the Tiber River to Rome.

After being unloaded near the Mausoleum of Augustus, the site of the Pantheon was still about 700 meters away. Thus, it was necessary to either drag them or to move them on rollers to the construction site. So in this case, it is really amazing that how great humans are!

Entrance of Pantheon with the large bronze doors，it is ancient but not the original one of the Pantheon. The current doors – manufactured too small for the door frames – have been there since about the 15th century.

The wooden stricture at the portico, the triangular wooden truss is brilliant because it is stable as geometry itself and does well for tension force

Rotunda

When I enter the temple, the top of the rotunda wall features a series of brick relieving arches, visible on the outside and built into the mass of the brickwork. The Pantheon is full of such devices – for example, there are relieving arches over the recesses inside – but all these arches were hidden by marble facing on the interior and possibly by stone revetment or stucco on the exterior.

The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 meters (142 ft), so the whole interior would fit exactly within a cube (also, the interior could house a sphere 43.3 meters (142 ft) in diameter). These dimensions make more sense when expressed in ancient Roman units of measurement: The dome spans 150 Roman feet; the oculus is 30 Roman feet in diameter; the doorway is 40 Roman feet high. The Pantheon still holds the record for the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. It is also substantially larger than earlier domes.

Though often drawn as a free-standing building, there was a building at its rear into which it abutted. While this building helped buttress the rotunda, there was no interior passage from one to the other.

Interior

the interior of the dome was possibly intended to symbolize the arched vault of the heavens. The oculus at the dome’s apex and the entry door are the only sources of light in the interior. Throughout the day, the light from the oculus moves around this space in a sort of reverse sundial effect. The oculus also serves as a cooling and ventilation method. During storms, a drainage system below the floor handles the rain that falls through the oculus.

Lighting and ventilation diagram

The lighting effect from the oculus

The dome features sunken panels, in five rings of twenty-eight. It gives a lot of depth to the roof and the space. This evenly spaced layout was difficult to achieve and, it is presumed, had symbolic meaning, either numerical, geometric, or lunar. In antiquity, the coffers may have contained bronze stars, rosettes, or other ornaments.

Circles and squares form the unifying theme of the interior design. The checkerboard floor pattern contrasts with the concentric circles of square coffers in the dome. Each zone of the interior, from floor to ceiling, is subdivided according to a different scheme. As a result, the interior decorative zones do not line up. The overall effect is immediate viewer orientation according to the major axis of the building, even though the cylindrical space topped by a hemispherical dome is inherently ambiguous. According to the reading, this discordance has not always been appreciated, and the attic level was redone according to Neoclassical taste in the 18th century.

Just behind Piazza Navona with its street artists and baroque fountains, you can find the little church of Santa Maria della Pace with its distinctive semi-circular portico. This Renaissance church was built for Pope Sixtus IV in 1480-84 with its Baroque style facade added in 1656.

According to legend, the reason the church was squeezed into this small piazza was that it was here a soldier pierced the breast of a painted Madonna causing it to bleed. To placate her, Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) ordered the building of a new church if she would bring the war with Turkey to an end. The deal was done and the result was this church which was actually built over the remains of an existing one.

A main feature of the church and monastery complex is the Bramante cloister, which was added creating a sanctuary of calm which is now home to concerts and an art gallery. Built in 1500-1504 for Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, it was the first work of Donato Bramante in the city. It has two levels: the first is articulated by shallow pilasters set against an arcade; the second also has pilasters set against an arcade which is vertically continuous with the lower storey, but with columns located in between each arch span.

My own exploration:

Keywords: Exterior, Interior, Cloister

Exterior

The facade of the church has two orders and is entered by a semi-circular pronaos with paired Doric columns. The church presses forward almost to fill its tiny piazza, the church facade also focused on architectural detailing, the play of concave and convex forms at varying scales in and around the predominant main facade masks the neighboring buildings, extends the apparent breadth of the facade and so increases the visual impact on the spectator physically confined by the small trapezoidal piazza. Something I also learned from the exterior also include the fact that the monumental effect of the plasticity of forms, spatial layering and chiaroscuro lighting effects belies the actual scale of this urban intervention.

Plan diagram of the church and small portion of its adjacent cloister

Interior

The interior can be reached from the original fifteenth-century door, has a short nave with cruciform vaulting and a tribune surmounted by a cupola. The interior of the dome was supported by a series of ribs radiating from the lantern. This is an early example of combining these two forms of dome decoration. Carlo Maderno designed the high altar (1614) to enframe the venerable icon of the Madonna and Child.

The interior view at the entrance, the color of the material plays a harmony set

Different type of openings brings light into the interior

Interior shot showing the openings and roof structure

Cloister

The entrance of the cloister

the cloister was designed for quiet contemplation, So the entrance way has a deep depth away from the street, it is one of those spots that is perfect when we are overwhelmed by the city of Rome.

The courtyard of the cloister. Bramante cloister has two stories, where the heavy piers with applied orders in sequence (Corinthian and Ionic). From what I know, the trabeation of the upper story, and the unadorned, sculpturesque power of the lower story, were derived from systems used in the Colosseum, and the Theater of Marcellus.

Plan diagram of the cloister, including the courtyard patterning, thus showing the proportion of the space, the cloister forms a square itself. As the floor patterning suggests, it has the self-concentrated spatial quality.

View from the second story, which was open to public as a restaurant and bookstore.

Trabeation system of the upper story

Tectonic sketch showing the trabeation system of the second level arcade.

Dell’Autostrada del Sole is a church in Florence, Italy, designed by architect Giovanni Michelucci. The church is formally named after John the Baptist but has also earned the name Church of the Freeway of the Sun for its location between autostrada del Sole (Freeway of the Sun) and the A11 Firenze-Mare highway.

The design of the church is meant to reflect both modern and traditional church design. The stone facing evokes a traditional feel while the tent-like vertical elements and copper roofing reflect modern design tastes. The church stands 27.5 meters (88.5 ft) high.

It was built between 1960 and 1963, based on plans by Giovanni Michelucci. The materials used for the building are stone and concrete for the walls, copper for the roof, oxidized to green on the outside and burnished blond on the inside. Marble, glass and bronze are used for the interior elements. The floorplan of the building is asymmetrical and follows sinuous curves creating a feeling of fluid space. The church is decorated with works of Marcello Avenali, Jorio Vivarelli, Dilvo Lotti and Luigi Venturini.

The intentions of the church builders was to honor the workers who had died during construction of the freeway and to provide a “parish for the tourists” so those who are traveling can have a place to worship.

The Autostrada del Sole is a reflection of two great societal changes of the 1960s, a society moving toward a more mobile and itinerant culture and the new religious ideas brought forward in the Second Vatican Council pronouncements.

Today we visited the famous Giovanni Michelucci’s church：Dell’Autostrada del Sole，as the photo indicates, you’ll see the highway church as you’re driving down the A1, negotiating the ramps around the Firenze Nord exit. As for me, it functions as an organic sculpture for people moving through this particular area, as the idea for Michelucci is to “stop” the drivers here, not so much for physical rest, but for some spiritual uplifting. The church was thus developed as a kind of “traffic stopper” that ought to slow motorists down. My own feeling is that its open shapes and continuity with the level and land of the highway itself were also intended as welcoming.

I started by circling all 360 degrees of the exterior as I felt invited to do so by a raised walkway that takes you around to admire each facet of the building. It’s surprising by walking around this structure because for every few steps, I can see a different shape, shadow and texture, which gives me the feeling of organic.

Material

From the exterior, I felt that the use of material is brilliant, on the base, the use of the rusticated stone indicates a feeling of heaviness, which benefits for a church: as a spiritual holly place for people to worship, the base has to be stable in order to show the strong “foundation”.

The material for the upper part is copper oxidized to green, which gives the feeling of lightness and modern, it reflects more light in order to show the contrast to the heavy base, as a result, the roof is light and bright, and the green color coordinates well with the surrounding green nature: trees and grass, which gives a harmoniousness and balance to the surrounding area.

This a quick sketch I did for analyze the building form and its relationship to the site. First, the building is spiraling up itself from the heavy base to the top cross. Second, the logic of choosing the material color is: heavy color connected to a light color, that is, the base connecting the roof, surrounding trees and the grass ground. It is a deep logic of combination of balanced color.

Light&Opening

The church has some brilliant solution of openings, it tells us tectonic ideas and how to bring light into the interior, I focus on the apertures and effect of light while visiting the church, here is my discovery.

This is a small opening occurring on the stone base, as we can see, it tells us the tectonic idea of how to make a opening: a concrete lintel seats above the load-bearing wall, since it is a small opening, I think the function of it was to bring spot light into space to draw people’s attention.

Large openings near the alter, from my point of view, the irregular mullion is mimicking the stone base supporting it.

The vertical apertures, there are three types of lintels: the end-supported, cantilever and sandwich. which are marked in the photo.

Different type of openings on the base and upper part, I think it is the architect’s notion to celebrate the different tectonic system of the base and upper part.

A stone stands right front the window all the way to the bottom of the lintel

A stone stands right front the window half way to the bottom of the lintel

Apertures at the entrance, it celebrate the transparency of the entrance as well as bring more light into the lobby

As we enter the church, the openings of the lobby seems more regular, because the lobby has a certain linear rhythm, the language of the openings and roof structure follow the rhythm, this is something I learn as a designer.

The interior light effect, we can see the different light reflecting quality of stone and concrete, the stone has a more rough surface, the light was absorbed a lot. The concrete surface is more smooth, thus reflecting more light, that why Michelucci place the concrete at upper level.

With the help of the concrete roof, as mentioned above, the space was well lighted.

The aperture here has two different types, at the bottom, the linear aperture brings vertical light and the view was framed along the edge of the adjacent mass, the aperture at the top opens up to the sky to give more depth for the space. At the same time, it is a separation of two materials.

This window frames the view of the courtyard, as a vertical linear visual experience.

The horizontal window appears at the alter of the church, both in lower level and upper level, the horizontality nature of the aperture brings more light into the space.

The well designed aperture helps light up the interior

Compared to horizontal window, the function of vertical window has a different quality of welcoming light

Vertical, spotted and large aperture work together based on the geometry and function of the space

This window show the depth of the courtyard

The aperture reflect the nature of the space

Interesting combination of geometry and materials

The mezzanine was well lighted by the aperture on both side: the alter and the gallery space.

Structure and Element Expression

The structure and element of the church is mimicking the irregularity and organic quality of the nature

The vertical tree like structural element give a feeling of nature, in fact is the concrete member painter with tree bark grains

Today we visited Carlo Scarpa’s well known renovation of the Querini Stampalis Foundation in Venice Italy, in general, it is a particularly impressive example of a renovation project which layers the past and present constructions into a powerful assemblage.

Front bridge entrance, it is closed as we visited.

Interior Hall

Plan Diagram

The Fondazione Querini Stampalia was founded in Venice 1869 by the last descendant of the Venetian Querini Stampalia. The site is composed of the living quarters, an archive, a library, and a museum of paintings and furnishings. In 1949, the Presidential Council of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia decided to begin the restoration of some parts of the Palazzo Querini. Malino Dazzi, director of the foundation, tasked Carlo Scarpa to restore the ground floor, which was in a state of neglect and decay. The project was completed just over ten years later.The restoration project included careful cleaning of four existing architectural elements: the bridge, the entrance, the portico and the garden.

Scarpa’s museum renovations exhibit his minimalist style within historic buildings, a style that allows the existing context to pass beneath and behind the new work without being disturbed. However, it was not the invention of spatial themes with which Carlo Scarpa was involved, but rather the manipulation of materials in relation to the human body.

For this visit, I focused on two aspects of the building: detail and water

Detail:

Scarpa’s expression of detail in this building varies at different scale, with different combination of materials, such as steel, concrete, glass and brick. Here are some examples I found intriguing about this building.

This is a staircase at the side entrance, it is an innovative stair to me due to the way that each step continuous and warp around the step above.

This detail shows how concrete hangs out of the brick wall, thus to give a feeling of depth.

This detail is a celebration of the intersection of steel and concrete

A fascinating column detail showing the compositional relationship of glass and concrete

An innovative door, it is a an interesting way to bring light in as well.

Water:

Scarpa is a master of using the water as a critical element in his building, what I found interesting is he introduced the experience of water in two different ways: the flowing water and the static water. For the flowing water, it creates dynamic feeling for the space, on the one hand, we can see something flowing compared to the other static objects surrounding it, on the other hand, we can hear the water as well, it is a special feeling as we could “listen” to architecture.

For the static water pool, the transparent nature of water gives us a feeling of brightness. Also, it reflects the scenario surrounding it thus giving an illusionary sense for people. Last but not least, Scarpa loves the zen idea taken from Japanese culture, the static water makes us feel peaceful. Here are some photos I took thus to support my point.

These details show how well done of the usage of water in this building.

San Giorgio Maggiore is a 16th century Benedictine church on the island of the same name in Venice, northern Italy, designed by Andrea Palladio and built between 1566 and 1610. The church is a basilica in the classical renaissance style and its brilliant white marble gleams above the blue water of the lagoon opposite the Piazzetta and forms the focal point of the view from every part of the Riva degli Schiavoni.

Plan and section diagram of the church

Exterior:

The façade is brilliantly white and represents Palladio’s solution to the difficulty of adapting a classical temple facade to the form of the Christian church, with its high nave and low side aisles, which had always been a problem. Palladio’s solution superimposed two facades, one with a wide pediment and architrave, extending over the nave and both the aisles, apparently supported by a single order of pilasters, and the other with a narrower pediment (the width of the nave) superimposed on top of it with a giant order of engaged columns on high pedestals. This solution is similar to Palladio’s slightly earlier facade for San Francesco della Vigna, where the other parts of the church had been designed by Sansovino. On either side of the central portal are statues of Saint George and of Saint Stephen, to whom the church is also dedicated.

Interior:

What I am interested in this church is how Palladio playing with light，based on the geometry of the church, which is symmetrical along the elongated longitudinal axis, I assume Palladio use this brilliant idea of carving in the roof to ring light in, and at the same time, the light got reflected and pointed to the longitudinal axis, thus to strengthen the feeling of the space.

Zoomed in shot of the roof, showing the reflection of the light

The bright and spacious interior is marked by symmetry, by the clam, uniform distribution of light that arrives from and so called thermal windows in the form of lunettes, divided into three parts, that reflect the religious sensitivity of monastic times.

Today we visited the boat building workshop at San Trovaso, which is next to the Church of San Trovaso along the narrow Rio San Trovaso, just north of the Zattere. it was first opened in the 17th century.Back in the 16th-century heyday of the gondola, there were upwards of 10,000 of these elegant boats plying the waters of Venice’s canals. Today there are but 350, and the job of gondoliere is still a coveted profession, passed down from father to son over the centuries.

The boatyard is surrounded by Tyrolian-looking wooden structures . I find it is a true rarity in this stone city built on water, and an oddity shared by most boatyard.The wooden structures are home to the multiple-generational owners and original workshops for the traditional boats.

The Tempietto at the Villa Barbaro in Maser was completed around 1580, and as such is considered to be Palladio’s last work (along with the Teatro Olimpico). This is the first religious structure built to be attached to a Palladian villa. The tempietto is refined, as it filled the function both of villa chapel and parish church. It is based most evidently on the Pantheon in Rome, but architecturally the plan of the building is innovative because it combines a cylinder and a Greek cross, with four massive piers buttressing the dome. From reading I learned that the idealism of the tempietto’s centralized plans were religious and philsophical in nature.

Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser, is a large villa at Maser in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed and built by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, with frescos by Paolo Veronese and sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia and ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his brother Marcantonio an ambassador to King Charles IX of France. The villa was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1996.

Architecturally, the building has a rectangular massing with perpendicular rooms on a long axis, The central block, which is designed to resemble the portico of a Roman temple, is decorated by four Ionic columns.

The central block is flanked by two symmetrical wings. The wings have two floors but are fronted by an open arcade. Usually Palladio designed the wings to provide functional accommodation for agricultural use. The Villa Barbaro is unusual in having private living quarters on the upper level of the “barchesse” (the rooms behind the arcades of the two wings). The Maser estate was a fairly small one and would not have needed as much storage space as was built at Villa Emo, for example.

The wings are terminated by pavilions which feature large sundials set beneath their pediments. The pavilions were intended to house dovecotes on the uppermost floor, while the rooms below were for wine-making, stables and domestic use. In many of Palladio’s villas similar pavilions were little more than mundane farm buildings behind a concealing facade. A typical feature of Palladio’s villa architecture, they were to be much copied and changed in the Palladian architecture inspired by Palladio’s original designs.

This is a sketch of the villa.

This is a plan diagram drawn to show the symmetrical nature of the villa.

This is a section diagram to show different layers of space on a central axis,including the villa, the street, the front yard and the working farm, thus indicating the nature of the site itself.

In 1955 the Monuments office commissioned Carlo Scarpa an extension of the old canova museum and in 1992 the new wing was built.

For my own opinion, the addition part relate to the original museum perfectly, one of the reason is the consideration of light.

Light in the Canova Museum is the important aspect of the spatial composition that is designed to animate the collection of the plaster figures that are displayed. Scarpa, with the introduction or the corner window, was able to create a well-modulated and varied light throughout the gallery spaces.

Corner windows, an invention of the modernist movement, produce a room in which the glazed apertures – the light sources – and the walls – the surfaces which diffuse this light-are at right angles to each other. This solution avoids the dazzle resulting from a window in the middle of the wall, where the only diffusers are well away from the light source. Once it is realized that light can be modulated by an opportune combination of sources and diffusers, a new level of architectural quality becomes possible.

In the same manner as described in Wright’s ‘Destruction of the Box’, the corner window in this case also becomes a device through which the collection can conceptually inhabit the surrounding environment and vice-versa. Scarpa goes one step further by making it an inverted corner window. The view of the hillside is thus pulled into the interior while the space of the gallery is projected outward on to the hillside.

The relationships between the figures of the collection are also of note. Because it is a permanent collection, it affords the possibility of creating juxtapositions that give life to the figures. A bust, cantilevered from the wall, can be said to be in conversation with the reclining figure below it. The tension that is created by such a placement is one that is suspended between presence and absence. Unlike the modern diorama which takes this tension and frames it, the visitor in this context can fully navigate through this viscous space.

The sketch showing the “re-entrant corner”

“For Scarpa, criticism was an experiment on the work of art, awakening the reflection by which the work becomes aware of itself. Scarpa’s architecture functions as a system of symbols, as an architectural language, which, being a language, becomes a ‘means’ for the recognition/production of reality rather than the ‘object’ of such a recognition/production” – Sergio Los, 1994.